You're Not Gibbs
by Trini08
Summary: The voices wouldnt go away, they just kept telling him, over and over, "You're not Gibbs". Warning: explicit suicide scene in chapter one.
1. Chapter 1

**_The idea came to me while reading someone elses fic about Tony being left out of the team, and i just had to write this. read and enjoy, sorta._**

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"You're not Gibbs". Those simple little words floated through his head every night when he tried to sleep. They kept him awake, like someone playing music too loud or people having a fight in the next apartment. "You're not Gibbs" they told him, over and over. Sure, he wasn't Gibbs, but that didn't mean he couldn't lead the team and be a good boss just like _he_ had been. A better boss, one who didn't run away and leave them without an explanation. But still, the only thing that ever stuck were those words, no words of encouragement or praise, just the same three words. "You're not Gibbs"

Tony had tried to drown out the voices with alcohol, but that never worked. He'd tried to ignore them, but then he couldn't sleep, couldn't rest. So he'd resorted to staying up all night, watching movies so that he had something to listen to other than _them_. And it worked; he drowned out the voices and hyped himself up on caffeine everyday so no one would know that he hadn't really slept in months. But then Gibbs came back, and not even the movies could hide the voices the screamed at him now days. They made him miserable, made him eye his standard issue gun as a good mute button. But he could never bring himself to do that, not after Kate. So he fought on against the voices, against the inadequacy he felt on a daily basis.

But all it took was one case, one case where he accidentally fell back into the routine he had when he was team leader. He'd metaphorically stepped on Gibbs' toes and he'd finally seen where his place was on the team again. He was back to being the person he'd been before, the clown who did his work and followed orders. He hated himself, hated that he'd turned down his own team to stay with a family who saw him as a loser. It was that day, the voices got too loud to ignore, too loud to drown out. He sat alone in the bathroom with the bottle of booze, trying anything to make them go away.

_You're not Gibbs You're not Gibbs You're not Gibbs You're not Gibbs You're not Gibbs_

"SHUT UP!" Tony shouted, smashing the bottle to the ground. The glass shattered everywhere, slicing through his hand with ease. He stared at the reddening cuts on his hand for several minutes before he realized the voices had quieted. They weren't screaming any more, more like talking. A slow smile crept to his face. He'd found a way to stop the voices. He picked up a piece of the glass on the floor and slid it down his palm, watching as the blood flowed and feeling the anger and the hurt flow out with it. The voices got quieter, now only whispers. He got up, turned the water in the bat tub to hot and let it fill up. He stripped down to a t-shirt and boxers and slid into the burning hot water. He knew someone would have to find him and as much as he enjoyed sharing all his personal details, he didn't want to be found naked and exposed like that. He took a deep breath and slowly slid the glass shard down his wrist, watching the blood spurt out where he'd pushed deep enough to nick the artery. He repeated it on the other side of the wrist and sank back into the water, basking in the quietness that surrounded him. There wasn't any Ziva shouting at him, no McGee, no Ducky and what was even better, no Abby. All he heard was the sound of the water moving around his body, he never even heard his cell phone ringing in the next room.

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**_See, like i said, depressing. But dont worry, there are more chapters to come. Wait and see what happens to our poor sad Tony. please R&R._**


	2. Chapter 2

**_Holy crp! I so didnt expect this much of a responce for this story. I mean, it just came into my mind when i was bored and now look, i keep getting reviews and all that. Hmm, i should try and kill Tony in stories more often. Hope you like the new chapter._**

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Gibbs slammed the phone onto the desk. DiNozzo wasn't answering his cell. How could he have been so stupid? His memories of the team were fuzzy at best, but he still knew DiNozzo was a good agent and, even more so, a good leader. He hadn't shown appreciation for the months that Tony had spent, leading the team when he himself had decided to quit without warning. Now, he had just come and taken his spot back without even a 'thank you' or a 'good job'. He had only recently begun to remember that his senior field agent thrived on praise and attention. He should have praised Tony for his willingness to step up and take on more responsibility during this last case. Instead he yelled at him and reprimanded him.

_Ok, one more call then I'm going to go find him._ He thought as he picked up the phone, pressing redial again, only to have it ring a few times and go to voicemail. Grabbing his keys, he left to go find Tony, starting at his apartment. He seemed to want to spend more and more time there these days, rather than going out to bars to pick up women. The drive was short, as it was late and no one was on the roads. He used the extra key he still had from when Tony had the plague and found the place empty. No music was playing, the TV was off and the DVD's all neatly placed back where they belonged. DiNozzo played himself off as a slob, but actually kept his apartment clean. As he scanned the room, Gibbs noticed the door to the bathroom was ajar and the light was on. He announced himself, walking closer to the room, but got no response. Pushing the door open further, the sight that was in front of him made him sick to his stomach. There was blood and shattered glass on the floor in one corner, but what scared him the most was that Tony lay in the bathtub, up to his chest in red-tinged water. He ran to the agent's side, placing two fingers on his neck, relieved to find a pulse. A weak, thready and barely there pulse, but a pulse none the less. Hooking his hand under the younger mans arms; he pulled the limp, almost lifeless body out of the warm water. Laying him on the floor, he located the wrist that had been cut in two places and was still oozing. He grabbed a towel, wrapped it around the wrist and held it there. Pulling his cell out of his pocket with the other hand, he dialed 911. He explained the situation to the operator and gave them the address, but didn't stay on the line after; he had an injured agent to attend to.

"Dammit DiNozzo." He said, pulling the man into his arms. His breathing was erratic and his skin was clammy.

"You don't have permission to die yet, DiNozzo" He told him as he pressed harder on his wrist. DiNozzo gasped slightly in pain, but remained unconscious. Time seemed to pass slowly and the few minutes the two were in silence, sitting on the floor, felt like forever.

"I'm sorry Tony." Gibbs said quietly, while softly brushing hair off the younger agents face. "I shouldn't have yelled. I know you were just trying to help."

Gibbs sighed, "I've lost too many people already, I can't loose you too, DiNozzo."


	3. Chapter 3

**_Here is the latest installment. Hope you like it. And yes, i am going somwhere with this, somewhere familiar. Just wait and see._**

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Hours seemed to pass in the few minutes before the ambulance came and took Tony away to the hospital. Gibbs had tried to go with them, but he was told that because he wasn't family he would have to follow in his own car. Those words stung more than he thought they would have. _He wasn't family_. He hadn't treated Tony much like family since he returned, so maybe he deserved this, deserved the long drive in complete silence, only accompanied by his thoughts. Maybe this was his punishment for letting his senior field agent down. Now, he was sitting here in the ER waiting room, hoping that someone would come tell him how Tony was. He had made sure that he was one of the emergency contacts for all his agents after Kate died. If something were to happen to them, he wanted to know. McGee had his sister and Ziva her parents, but Tony didn't have anyone else on that list except him. He was all the young agent had, and he still had treated him like that. Gibbs was jolted out of his self pity by a nurse.

"Are you Leroy Jethro Gibbs? Anthony DiNozzo's emergency contact?" she asked.

"Yes, how's Tony?" Gibbs said, desperately wanting information on his condition.

"He's stable and they'll be moving him up to ICU soon. He's lucky that you got there when you did, a few more minutes and he would have bled out." The nurse explained, resting a comforting hand on his. Gibbs wants to tell her that it's all his fault that Tony ended up resorting to this in the first place, wants to scream that he's a horrible person for pushing his agents, his friend, this far. But he doesn't, he simply nods and waits to be shown to ICU to see his agent.

Now everything passed in a blur. A nurse escorted him to the ICU where Tony was and then another nurse took him to Tony's bedside. There were machines there, machines that put blood and fluids into his veins, machines that monitored his heart rate and his blood pressure. There was one machine Gibbs had been relieved to not see, the ventilator. At least Tony had kept breathing on his own. There were tubes everywhere, most of them bringing the blood and fluids to the young man's body, but one tube scared Gibbs a little. It was a tube wider than the IV's and it went into Tony's nose. Gibbs knew what it was for, to clean out his stomach in case he had swallowed pills before slicing open his wrists. In the back of his mind he knew that Tony hadn't done this because there were no open, empty pill bottles. Gibbs sat in the single chair near the bed and waited. Waited to see if Tony would wake. He doesn't sleep, just sits and waits with his eyes on Tony. At one point he glances at the clock and see's that he's due into work in about an hour. He calls Jenny and leaves a message that he won't be in today and neither will DiNozzo, that there's been a medical emergency. He doesn't mention that his agent tried to kill himself because he treated him like an idiot. It's almost noon when Tony stirs for the first time. His eyes open slightly, so slightly that Gibbs doesn't notice at first. It's not until Tony weakly moves his hand to the tube in his nose that Gibbs first notice the young man's awake.

"Tony. You're ok, you're in the hospital." Gibbs says calmly, reaching out to gently pull Tony's hand from the tube. He's surprised when Tony jerks his hand away and stares at him with almost blank eyes. But his eyes don't stay blank for long, and Gibbs watches anger grow in them.

"Go away." Tony says his voice scratchy from lack of use in the last 12 hours.

"Tony…" Gibbs starts, but is interrupted by Tony.

"Go away!" Tony shouts his heart rate increasing. Nurses rush into the room to tend to the patient and one of them escorts Gibbs back to the waiting room. She tells him that it's best if Tony rests for a while before he has more visitors.

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**_Hope you enjoyed it, stay tuned for more, please R&R thanks_**


	4. Chapter 4

**_Hello all. Hope you enjoy this chapter, its a bit longer than most and a bit wordier. Still i hope you enjoy it. Just FYI, some of you may be mad at me, but this story is not going in the direction some of you think it is. You'll see in a few chapters. Next will be what Gibbs went though, not being allowed to see his agent._**

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Tony was barely aware of the pain in his wrist when he woke. But what he was more aware of was the hiss of oxygen through a nasal canula and the beep of a heart monitor. He mentally groaned, and waited for the voices to start up again. But they didn't. He cracked his eyes open, taking in the room around him. That's when his eyes notice something close to his face, some sort of tube. After several tries, he manages to move his hand toward it slightly. Someone grabs it and he whips it away, then he hears a voice he'd hoped he wouldn't. He shifts his eyes to face the owner of the voice.

_Shit_. He thinks to himself, and suddenly the voices start again, quieter but there none the less. Only now the voices make him angry, not sad and inferior. Just plain mad.

"Go away." Tony says, surprised at how his voice sounds. It's weak, scratchy like he'd been yelling all night.

The other person in the room talks again. Says his name, _again_. Tony lashes out, finding his voice again, shouting his order again. In the background he hears the beep of the heart monitor increase and sees nurses come in and take the other person out of the room.

Tony starts to relax a little after he's gone; he flops backward onto the bed, all energy spent. The nurses ask if he's in pain, or if he needs anything and the only response he can muster is to shake his head 'no'. He wants to cry, wants to sleep, but the voices are back. He opens his eyes, one nurse lingers, checking his vitals.

"Can I have something to help me sleep, please?" He asks, not caring that his voice is weak and small in front of this pretty young woman.

"Sure." She tells him, leaving the room to get him his pill.

The days pass and he's forced to talk with doctors and psychiatrists and he finally admits that it's the voices that made him do this. Not in a psycho-crazy-person sort of way, but in an I-need-to-get-away-from-this sort of way. They put him on a new medication or two and it seems to help. The voices aren't there, he doesn't feel like crying. But all in all, it may be because since that first time he woke up, no one from NCIS has been to visit him. A direct order from the psychiatrist. In fact his first visitor is when he's moved out of ICU to a regular floor. Jenny comes to see him, the one person he told the doctors to allow in.

"How are you feeling?" She asks; it's the stereo typical question that everyone feels the need to ask.

"I'm ok." Tony says, but he has no emphasis behind it.

She smiles at him and tells him that there will be a spot open for him at NCIS when he feels ready to return. She was always the one person who expressed a gratitude for how well he did leading the team in Gibbs' absence. Tony nods in response and she leaves the room.

A few days on the regular unit and another blood transfusion later and the medical doctor tells him he's ready to be discharged, but that he'll have to stay a while upstairs on the psychiatric floor before he can go home. Tony understands, even though he didn't really want to kill himself, he did almost succeed. He's escorted to the ward by a nurse, and thinks that for a moment, he can hear Gibbs yelling at someone in the corridor. He ignores it, pushing the thought from his brain, knowing that the doctors won't allow anyone to come see him. Once there, he prepares himself for a few days of talking out his feelings in front of strangers and doctors, and promising to never try anything like this again. He's ready for whatever it takes to get out of here and get back to his life. Jenny told him that someone had cleaned up his apartment so he wouldn't be faced with it when he returned. He knows that it was his team and he knows that there was nothing jenny could have done to stop them. He's thankful for that, but he still feels that it's too little too late. Jenny says there is a special opportunity for him when he feels ready to return, and right now that seems like the light at the end of the tunnel to him.

So he talks and listens and takes his medications. After a week split between the ICU and the medical unit and another week on the psychiatric ward, Tony's ready to leave. He gets his prescriptions and his discharge orders and has them call him a cab. Jenny offered to send her driver to pick him up, but he declined, saying that he wanted to do this on his own.

Once back in his apartment, he glances around the place. Its cleaned up, no spilt liquor in the bathroom and no blood. But that isn't all they cleaned, his dishes are done, the trash taken out, the Chinese food take out boxes gone. He sighs, knowing their over compensating from guilt, but he doesn't care, let them have guilt. He calls his landlady and asks to have his locks changed. They all have a key to the door right now, but he doesn't want any of them visiting. After taking care of that, he flops on the couch, flipping channels on the TV but finding nothing interesting to watch. After a week of watching it in the hospital while he was just sitting there in bed, he just isn't as interested any more. His stomach rumbles and he realizes it's been a while since he ate. He goes to his kitchen in search of something edible, knowing that before all this happened he had nothing in his cabinets. So he's surprised when he opens them to find food galore in them. He sighs again, noticing a note posted to a box of cereal. He pulls it off the box, crumples it and throws it in the trash. He doesn't really care what they have to say to him. He's sick of their words anyway.

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**_hope you enjoyed, please R&R. PS: part of the reason for this story is this chapter. Just a random fact i learned in my first weeks of senior internship in nursing school. 3 day holds for suicidal patients do not go into effect until they are ready to be released from medical care._**


	5. Chapter 5

**_Hello, here is the new chapter, sorry it took me so long, work sux. I'm supposed to be out at 9, i get out at like 1030, 1100ish. Why did I choose nursing again? Hope you enjoy it._**

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A few weeks pass, and with the exception of a few phone calls to Jenny, he's had no contact with work. No one from his team has contacted him, and he thinks that, just maybe, they've gotten the hint that he wants to be left alone. Jenny mentioned the "opportunity" again a few times in their phone calls, and told him that he should come in to see her soon to get the details. It's now been over a month since that night and Tony finally feels ready to go back to work. He's scared the entire time that he's driving to NCIS. Scared that he'll have to face _them_ again. Luckily he knows his way around the building and manages to make it to the back elevator that leads almost directly to Jenny's office. The last thing he wants to do is walk past the bullpen, but still as he crosses the catwalk, he can't help but risk a quick glance over to it. He doesn't stop walking, and it's just a quick, passing glance, but he sees his old team sitting at their desk, working, as if nothing had changed.

Tony smiles and greets Cynthia, who calls into Jenny that he's here and he enters her office. The two smile and greet each other like they would normally, like they did when Tony came up to see her while he was lead Agent.

"So what's this 'special opportunity' you told me about?" Tony says, wanting to get to the point so he can get out of there. He still hates being in this building, taking the risk that Gibbs will just walk in like he always does.

"Well, there is an opening on an NCIS team that I think would be good for you." She tells him. "I was about to offer it to you before…., well, that doesn't matter now, what's important is that it's still available if you want it, that is."

"Where?" Tony asks, intrigued. Jenny was the only one to believe in him as a leader and if she held onto this opportunity for him even after all that's happened, it must be good.

"Rota, Spain" She replies, grabbing a folder on her desk and handing it to him. "Of course, for the first few months you would be in a similar position as you were here, a senior field Agent working under a lead Agent. But that would just be until you were comfortable enough to take over the team. Like I said, this opportunity came up about two months ago and I assigned a temporary lead Agent to the team until I could offer you the position."

"You really think I did that great of a job taking over my old team?" Tony asked meekly, avoiding using their names because he figured it would hurt more.

"Yes, I do. You did an amazing job with them." Jenny replied. "You held your team together through some of the toughest times you've ever had to face. Even if they didn't see it and even if they didn't appreciate it, you were a great leader."

Tony blushed listening to Jenny's praise. He never thought that anyone could think so highly of him, ever. A by product of his upbringings. He was used to never being good enough, so to hear Jenny tell him that he did a good job made him self conscious.

"You don't have to decide right now, I can give you a few days to think it over. If you feel like you aren't ready, we can work out another assignment until you are." Jenny told him.

"Um, yeah, I'm gonna think about it for a few days." Tony said, shyly. He suddenly wanted out of there, and it had nothing to do with his old team being only feet away in the bullpen. Somewhere in the back of Tony's brain he thought to himself that it was sad that he responded this way to any sort of praise.

"Ok." Jenny said, sensing his discomfort. "Get back to me by Monday."

She handed him a file containing the details of the assignment, shook his had and walked with him out to the elevator. On her way back to her office, she stopped at the balcony and looked out over the team. She made eye contact with Gibbs when he glanced up towards her. She wanted to yell, wanted to scream at him that he was an idiot. She only hoped the expression in her eyes conveyed her message to him, as she glared back at him. Jenny was very disappointed in him. Disappointed that he had let DiNozzo slip so far, disappointed that he could forget Tony, forget what he had meant to Tony before the explosion. He was the only person for a long time in Tony's life to show genuine interest in him, the only father-figure Tony knew. Gibbs broke eye contact as McGee announced he'd found something, and Jenny walked back to her office without a word between the two. She figured years of working with the man, who rarely spoke in the first place, had to have helped their silent communication. She hated the man for throwing away the bond he had built with DiNozzo.

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**_Dont worry, I fully intend on having one more showdown between Tony and the team before he ships off. Please R&R._**


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